Perhaps you could elaborate re: "the Pagan Pride Festival"? 

 No thanks, I have a religion with which I am very comfortable.  You don't go door to door do you?

Good question! 

We'll post a more elaborate explanation later, but here's the short version: 

We are part of the national Pagan Pride Project organization.  The mission of the Pagan Pride Project is to foster pride in Pagan identity through education, activism, charity and community. 

Cities across the country host public Pagan Pride Day celebrations in the Fall to celebrate their community, to help educate the public about Pagan religions and collect food donations for local charities. 

You can read more on our national website here:  www.paganpride.org/

We are planning on having entertainment such as music and dancers, speakers, vendors, workshops and a Thanksgiving/Harvest ritual.  

Glad you're happy with your religion.  No, we don't go "door to door."  We're not interested in recruiting people.

We are more interested on fostering respect and freedom to practice for all religions. 

 make a faerie house, get a faerie reading and learn to plant a faerie garden.

Please clarify. Is "Faerie" a noun or an adjective?

Noun doing the work of both, I would imagine.  I think the original form of the noun form is "fae"

In the phrase "a dog house," what part of speech is "dog"?

Me?  No.  But I don't believe in angels, demons, gods or Iraqi WMD's either.

 Sounds like a cool event. Thanks for the post.

And Wicca deserves the same kind of respect as a valid choice, though it won't receive that from folks whose rituals and beliefs are equally silly.  I can't remember a Wiccan trying to write his/her beliefs into law the way too many Christians seem wont to do.

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I have no problem with the JW's or Mormons at my door, who take "no, thanks" for an answer.   The lying, theiving Scientologists are another matter.

 B*B

Good to see CSUB is having Earth Day.  I look forward to the festival this upcoming Mabon.

April 26 is a Saturday.

 OOps, fixed it.  Thanks for noticing!

If you're a true Scientologist, you've probably had their how-to-lie-effectively training, so I'd never see through your clever fibs. 

 I tried the wiccan thing too.  But like atheism it was just the worship of my own mental constructs and provided no answers for me ,but merely rienforced my negative side.

Thanks for the heads up~ sounds interesting!

 All Hail Lord Kelvin, Giver of Laws!

If Wicca reinforced your negative side, then it is possible that you either weren't really taking Wiccan beliefs to heart, or you sought it for the wrong reasons, "using" it rather than practicing it.

etbartley, the primary requirement in Scientology is "more money than sense."

That is the difference between the neo-pagan movement and real spirituality.  Real spirituality is the answer to Gods call of adoption and growing to know Him as He is.  God is a person and must be treated as one and His relationship with the faithful can be described as a dance that God leads.  Real spirituality calls for a person to humble himself and give up his cherished delusions.  To step out side of himself and see reality as it really is.

     The neo-pagan movement was largely created by Romanticist during the late 19Th and early 20Th century.  It was then given a boost by the vacuum of true spirituality that was filled by the new age and self help movements.  It claims to be the old pagan religions that crumbled to dust at the advent of Christianity ,but that is largely a untrue marketing tool.  It's approach is that everyone is free to create gods in their chosen image.  These false idols can then by manipulated by rituals and spells or what they call the Craft/Magik.  You can find instructions on how to do this in the occult section of any bookstore.  Just lay down your money and start calling yourself High Priestess Conceit and maybe write your own book of "Authentic Spells."  Instead of fostering personal growth and transcending our selfishness in a loving relationship with God and our fellow man.  Neo-paganism consist of projecting their petty will on the universe and trying to manipulate it to their own ends.  If you ever meet some neo-pagans and many of my friends from my early adulthood did fall into this delusion; you would notice that they are all high priest or priestesses.  Nobody claims to be a simple lay person.  That's because the Neo-pagans preys on peoples egos and bad self esteem

     It has been the experience of the Christian Church that any dabbling in the Occult leaves you open to attack by malicious spirits.  God in His great mercy spared me the horrors of being possessed by very real evil in my prodigal misadventures.  Unfortunately there are those who though they thought they were only doing white magik ,became possessed by the demons.  I know a girl who was a psychic healer.  She came to the Orthodox Church for help and by Gods grace in a 6 month course the Priest drove 200 demons out of her.  Helping the Priest in these exorcisms were two Medical Doctors, an Registered Nurse and a Police Officer.  That shows that the case was not something made up by some religious fanatic.  +I pray that God keep you from evil and lead you into His light+  

You wrote that Wicca reinforced your negative side.  From the looks of things, that negative side is still alive and well.  The problem could that the source of your negative side is internal, and it will express itself in whatever spiritual symbolism that you adopt for yourself.

The answer is to reinforce your own positive energies.  One principle of Wicca is that if you keep throwing around negative energies, those energies will be more than happy to keep you company.  Cultivate positive energy, and that positive energy will reward you with more of its own abundance.

I will not mock or insult the spiritual path that you find for yourself.  However, if negativity comes a little too easily for you, it will come out whether you are a Wiccan, an atheist, or a Christian.

 Yes I am familiar with the wiccan rules of magik.  Like I said "been there and done that." and it is mostly fantasy ,but it does carry the serious risk of demonic possession.  I am much more positive since I became Christian.  Attending Orthodox Church services, keeping a prayer rule, fasting, and alms giving all as taught by the God/Man Jesus Christ has had a real transformative affect on me.  Were as paganism and nihilism only reinforced my ego and isolation from the rest of the world.  Of course growth is not instantaneous ,but a struggle that will take all this transient life.  See my Blog titled "Despair" for insight on real spiritual struggle. http://people.bakersfield.c...

And like I said playing with energies you don't understand will get you into trouble.  The devil can appear as a angle of light and has eons of experience in deluding man.  Only God can protect us and He can only do that if we invite Him to and work with Him for real spiritual growth.  As they say nature abhors a vacuum and where God is not.  The devil will come in and he doesn't respect human free will like God does.

That is good to hear.  To find a spiritual path that harmonizes with the best in you, and brings the best to you, does not demand that you do it my way.  What you say in that first paragraph is very beautiful.

Concerning playing with energies that one doesn't understand being a door to trouble, I agree with what you say, but for some different reasons.  I see a lot of evil energy disguising itself as light, and it's showing its darkness behind a lot of religious fronts with popular followings.  You can find it disguising itself as Wicca, Christianity, Judaism, Islam. 

This doesn't mean that these spiritual paths are evil, only that evil is taking advantage of the availability of these spiritual paths.

May your path bring the best for you.

Well said ApolloDawn ~ Something I have often said before,a evil man uses what is at hand to exercise his/her desire for power~ be it religion or what have you. All the worlds religions,IMHO,use different concepts and rituals to say pretty much the same things ~ love,fellowship,good works,be a better human. It is believing ,in my mind at least,there is only one path to that which can not be named,that gets one into trouble.

Fantastic turnout.